The Absence of Derech Eretz

The Absence of Derech Eretz

By Sherwin Pomerantz

On Friday of last week Gideon Levy, a columnist and member of the editorial board of the generally left leaning Ha’aretz newspaper here in Israel was verbally and physically attacked while walking in the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv with Catrin, his companion.

According to the piece he wrote about the event in this morning’s paper someone came up behind both of them as they were walking, threatened to beat them up, called him a “leftist,” an “Israel hater,” and an “Arab lover” and then proceeded to spit in the face of both Gideon and Catrin.  According to Levy the attacker was from the religious community and spoke Hebrew with a decidedly Anglo accent.   

Now I am no big fan of Gideon Levy.  While he writes exceptionally well his political views and mine are clearly not in sync.  Nevertheless, there was certainly no excuse for someone, regardless of how much he disagrees with what Levy writes, to attack him and spit in his face. 

But why should we be surprised?  Two weeks ago, at the monthly women’s prayer service at the kotel, the western wall of the Temple, members of the Orthodox community who are against the legally-sanctioned presence of the Women of the Wall, as they call themselves, chose to not only hurl obscene epithets at women who only wanted to pray in the manner which suited them and the courts found acceptable, but also threw feces laden diapers and other obnoxious items at them as well.

And last Monday morning, Peggy Cidor, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post woke up to a knock on her door by the local police asking her to look at the insulting, derogatory and life threatening graffiti which had been spray painted on the walls of the hallway leading to her apartment.  Why?  Simply because she is a supporter of Women of the Wall.

Yet in spite of these types of attacks, and I have only named a few, the religious leadership here remains silent.  Peggy Cidor writes that she did get a letter of sincere concern from the Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, but most of the letter was devoted to criticism of the Women of the Wall and their assumed disregard for the holiness of the place. 

The saddest part of all of this for me, as a traditionally observant Jew, is the realization that the concept of derech eretz is too often observed in the breach by the religious community especially when it comes to other Jews who disagree with them. 

While the literal meaning of the term is “the way of the land,” most people understand this to mean what Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explained when, in 1851, he extended the concept to mean the need to maintain the social order.  It does no good, in my opinion, to make a point of rising when a revered sage enters the room if the next day one chooses to spit in the face of someone with whom he disagrees.

Rabbi Hirsch understood this when he said:  "Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life: it comprises all of life. To be a Jew is not a mere part, it is the sum total of our task in life. To be a Jew in the synagogue and the kitchen, in the field and the warehouse, in the office and the pulpit … with the needle and the graving-tool, with the pen and the chisel—that is what it means to be a Jew."

It is a lesson many of my more observant brethren should learn and practice in order to fulfill the good Lord’s expectation of us to be, first and foremost, righteous human beings.  

Jewish Leadership as Role Models

Jewish Leadership as Role Models

By Sherwin Pomerantz

I am sitting here reading the text of an open letter to the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College from Rabbi Ellen Lippmann and I can feel my blood pressure rising.

Rabbi Lippmann urges the College to reconsider its requirement that all prospective rabbinical students sign an agreement that “any student engaged, married, or partnered/committed to a person who is not Jewish by birth or conversion will not be admitted or ordained.”  And her logic, of course, is the need for the Reform movement to be inclusive in all of its activities.

But she and others like her who have posited similar arguments over the last few months miss the point.  An individual Jew can and often does choose to live his/her life in the manner which has the most meaning to him or her.  Others may criticize the choices that are so made, but at the end of the day these are, indeed, individual choices and, like them or not, they need to be respected.

On the other hand, when it comes to people who elect to place themselves in a position of leadership within the Jewish community, their values need to reflect the highest principles of Jewish tradition concomitant with the principles of the organizations they lead.  American Jewry has been moving down this slippery slope for some time and the natural, I would say almost expected, result is that now there are those who even want to condone intermarriage by rabbis.  Can such people be so blind as not to be able to see the contradiction in terms when pursuing that goal?

For example, 40 years ago I was critical of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America  when they elected someone to head the Board of Overseers who was married to a non-Jew.  Sadly the powers that be at the time did not see any connection between personal life and community leadership.

When I still lived in Chicago I was once standing in a movie queue well after the end of the Sabbath when I saw three Conservative Rabbis and their wives leave the theater from the earlier show, which, of course, began before Shabbat ended.  When I raised this with the then president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the umbrella organization of Conservative Rabbis in America, I was told “Sherwin, you worry about the wrong things.”

The American Jewish community, even at that time, was already moving to a point where no demands on observance were made of people who chose to place themselves in the position of Jewish community leaders.  I recall once when I spoke at a south side Conservative congregation in Chicago and was introduced as the Regional President of the United Synagogue of America to which the MC added, “and he is also shomer Shabbat.”  Really?  Shouldn’t that have been an expectation of any lay leader in a movement that valued the observance of Shabbat?  But clearly it was not.

And now we come to the absurd position in American Jewish life where Reform Rabbis (for the moment as who knows which other movements will be pressured next on this topic) argue for giving the title of Rabbi even to someone who is married to a non-Jew. 

Rabbi Lippmann, of course, knows whereof she speaks.  She herself, the Rabbi of Congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn is married to a non-Jewish woman who calls herself a “permanently lapsed Irish-Catholic.”  And here is the kicker, when Rabbi Lippmann writes:  “A rabbi is a role model, and there are many kinds of role models.  Intermarriage is a fact of American Jewish life.  We can do a better job of connecting intermarried Jews to synagogues, rabbis and Jewish life.  One way is to knowingly ordain intermarried rabbis.”

So there you have it.  Social acceptability of domestic situations now dictates religious law.  I guess the next step is that if 10% of a congregation is made up of convicted felons then we should also ordain convicted felons as Rabbis so that such people will feel “included.”  The ultimate end of this convoluted reasoning is, of course, the demise of Judaism as a value-based torah-influenced faith. But for the Reform movement in America, the genie may already be out of the bottle with the cork nowhere to be found.